This is exactly my position

When I say I’m an atheist, this is exactly what I mean. Simply that I don’t believe God is real. Any god.

I think many people don’t understand lack of belief. When I say I don’t have a belief in any god, that does NOT mean I think there are no gods. That’s a different thing, and I may actually believe that. Or I may not. (In my own case, I do also believe there is no god; but that’s NOT what makes me an atheist.)

The prefix a means non or none or not. Therefore, an a-theist is simply a non-theist. A person without a god.

Stephen Hawking

Maybe it’s a subtle distinction, but it’s real. Atheism is not a belief; it’s the lack of a belief.

The quote he exposes says that an atheist is a “believer in fairy tales.” This is incredibly ironic, since we are the ones who do NOT believe the fairy tales.

To an atheist, God is as fictional as Zeus or Thor. Or the tooth fairy.

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2 thoughts on “This is exactly my position”

Absolutely, Paul. Religion is a set of beliefs; atheism is a lack of belief in God or gods. Atheism is NOT a belief system or worldview; it is the opposite. Of course, this doesn’t mean, as some claim, that an atheist doesn’t believe in anything. We may believe in most of the same things anybody else believes. The only thing atheists have in common — the one thing that makes us atheists — is our LACK OF BELIEF in any god.

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I am a lover of truth, which is found by a combination of common sense and the methods of science. These “methods of science” include observation, reasoning, testing the validity of one’s reasoning through experiments or further observations, communication with other informed people, and plenty of healthy skepticism. Without these things, there is no truth. There is only ignorance and superstition.